Credit: HANDOUT
Credit: HANDOUT
Esteban Castillo grew up in Southern California listening to his parents reminisce about the lives they left behind in Mexico in pursuit of a better future for their soon-to-be-born son. Memories of traveling back and forth across the border throughout his childhood to visit family in the state of Colima shape his own storytelling today.
In the introduction to “Chicano Eats: Recipes from My Mexican-American Kitchen” (Harper Design, $35), Castillo recalls the time he fell out of his grandmother’s toddler-size pozole pot and cut his head playing hide-and-seek. “I like to think that, much like the scar on my forehead, my passion for food (and hiding in the kitchen) has been etched into me since I was a little boy,” he writes.
He began recording oral traditions when he moved to California’s northernmost edge to attend college and discovered few options for traditional Mexican cuisine there. Homesick for his mother’s chiles rellenos, he called her for instructions. Despite the foggy details, he nailed it, eventually leading him to start a bilingual blog, “Chicano Eats.” Both the blog and the book document his experiences from childhood to present as “an artistic queer brown boy who grew up in California and likes to play with color and food.”
Recollections of sitting on a crate scarfing down tacos and orange Fanta sodas while his grandfather sold tacos from a cart inform his recipe for Mi Abuelito’s Tacos de Abodada (My Grandpa’s Tacos). That love for heritage shines through in creative comforts like the ones that starred at my family’s Fourth of July feast: jalapeno-laced Deviled Egg Macaroni Salad, Sweet Masa Corn Bread Muffins, and cinnamon-scented Gelatina de Leche (Milk jello, hazelnut liqueur optional). Had I not already ordered barbecue to-go, I would have brought his oven-baked Michelada Ribs with Hibiscus BBQ Sauce, too.
Castillo’s technicolor food photography and lively prose make every page feel like a party I want to share in, down to the last recipe for La Sandia Enchilada (The Spicy Watermelon), a tequila-infused ode to the margarita-loving Real Housewives of Orange County designed to “enjoy with friends while we share some hot chisme (gossip).”
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
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